


Steal A Car And Ring-A-Round Rosie

by Leaving_Storybrooke



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Boarding School, Coming of Age, F/F, F/M, Gen, Mother/Son parallels, different timelines, teenage runaways
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-02
Updated: 2016-12-03
Packaged: 2018-09-03 18:38:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8725849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leaving_Storybrooke/pseuds/Leaving_Storybrooke
Summary: After 14 years of living just he and his mom, Henry's grandfather, the elusive Mr. Gold, comes into his life hoping to reconnect with the only living reminder of his now deceased son. The Swan's lives are suddenly up-heaved as they make the move to Storybrooke, Maine so that Henry can attend the school at which his paternal family is a legacy. In a new environment and a school full of privileged teenagers, Henry's integrity is tested, Meanwhile, Emma struggles with life in a small time where privacy is basically non-existent. Along the way, Emma's teenage diary shows the journey she took to end up on her current life's path.





	1. Prologue

New England prepatory school was a Gold family tradition, apparently. Or at least that was what the thin older man in the designer suit and clutching the fancy cane (his grandfather, Henry mentally corrected himself) had said. And It's not that Henry didn't believe him. His mom had always told him that she could spot a liar, it was something in their eyes, she said. But this wasn't like that, it wasn't Gold that made it seem like a lie. The information itself just didn't feel true.

It didn't mesh well at all with image he had of his father, the image he had been given by his mom's tales of misspent youth. His father, Neal Cassidy, as his mom had known him, was a beatnik, a thief and an artist both con and otherwise. Together his parents had spent years running from the law, living in the backseat of a beat down Beetle, surviving off their stolen goods and being kept entertained on lonely nights by the tales they spun of their future in small house in Tallahassee with a picket fence and a couple of children.

He had died not long after Henry's birth in a car accident but through his mom's stories and whatever elements of the works of Jack Kerouac, Neal Cassady and other great beatnik writers of the 60's Henry felt were appropriate to apply to the biography of his father, Henry had always felt like he had a good idea of who Neal Cassidy was.

And the Neal he knew had not gone to boarding school. He had sprung up from whatever void vagrants came from, full of natural wisdom and a casual laid back, all-American spirit and had returned to that same void at the most romantic and dramatic of times.

He did not have any money and his father was not this spindly lawyer type who Henry had met not more than six months ago. The revelations that all these things were in fact real had left the boy feeling nauseas and , for the first time since he could remember, slightly resentful towards his mom for letting him go so long with the false image of his father or perhaps for allowing it to ever be shattered. Henry had not yet decided which.

But whatever the reason, this new found resentment or a desire to feel a connection to the father that now seemed like a distant stranger to him, Henry agreed to take on this family legacy despite his mom's protests.


	2. Chapter 2

1998  
Journal,

Lily didn't understand, you know? She couldn't. To her they were just some lame family like all the other ones she knew but they weren't that. They were my last chance and she just threw that away. 

And, like, she had a family. I knew she had parents who were going to come looking for her and a nice big summer home to return to when she was done having her fun playing runaway. I didn't have that. No one cared where I was and no one would come looking for me except the cops and even then they wouldn't look that hard. No one worried if some orphan ran away. I'd seen it tons of times back in the home. Whenever a kid went missing they were just another lost child on the streets, people walked passed them on their way to work and turned the other way when they asked for money. Maybe, eventually, they'd find a body riddled with needle marks, all pale sickly and face hollowed out by their final moments and they'd call the home so one of the carers could make an ID and we'd all hear about it 

I was feeling bitter, the type that forces you face into a sneer despite whether you like it or not, and worse I allowed myself to wallow in the self-pity I was feeling. It wasn't anything really but it helped me feel justified and even gave me a sense of warmth about what had happened. It pushed that small whispering voice that guilt-ed me about what I said to Lily further and further down. Still, nothing I told myself managed to kill the voice entirely.

Lily was a liar. I knew that. She had lied to me before about everything, and when we had had our fight I felt justified in what I was saying, that Lily was playing me so she could have he bad girl moment and go back to the country club next weekend and tell all her friends about her little adventure. But as the night got darker and the cold pulled my thoughts into a more sober mindset, I no longer felt so sure that she was lying about this.

If there is one constant in this life it's that adults suck and they will always let you down. And if a family like the --- could give up on me for having the wrong friends, than what would stop a family like the Page's from abandoning Lily when her running became too much of an inconvenience? So many people in this world make promises to stay, Ingrid had done the same to me not months before, but in the end they give up.

By the time my bus pulled in, I knew I had majorly fucked up.

\---------

Finding Lily wasn't hard. If I trusted what she had told me about being abandoned there were only so many places she could go and I was familiar with most of them. It took two days and more luck then good sense, but I stumbled upon her, half by accident, in a low traffic train station.

She looked terrible. Her hair was greasy and she was wearing the same clothes she had been when she found me only a few days earlier. It was weird because I had been looking for her for days and every time I imagined meeting with her I saw myself going up to her, all clam and cool, and apologizing and she would do the same and then we'd try to figure something out. But when the moment was before me, that anger that I thought had faded resurfaced.

I spent two minutes side eyeing her sleeping body before I even approached her. Mentally I had to remind myself that I wanted to be here. No one was making me, this wasn't like when my foster parents forced me to apologize to some foster sibling, I had pursued this for days and if I didn't want to feel like a complete idiot, I better walk over there and make good on several of the silent promises I had made myself while searching.

"Lily. Wake-up." I poked her gently on the shoulder and she stirred for a few minutes before her eyes caught sight of me and she affectionately grabbed my hand.

"Emma? What are you doing here? How did you find me?" She pulled me down to sit next to her and I reluctantly slumped into the seat.

"Well, you..I knew you couldn't survive out here by yourself, not without your credit card." I was angry at her but she looked so pleased to see me that my annoyance was slowly melting into good natured teasing. Her smile was bright and laced with enough genuine surprise to see me that I couldn't help but smile back at her, despite myself.

"So you came to look for me? Even after what happened?"

I reached over to grab her hand and looked her in the eyes from the side of mine.

"You were telling the truth this time. I don't think I've ever told you about me superpower but I know when someone is lying and you weren't. And anyway, we're still best friends, right?"

Lily smiled back even wider at me and squeezed her hand tightly around mine, her jelly bracelets pressing into my wrist.

'

"Forever." she said, nodding her head lightly. "So what now?" she asked.

I laughed slightly and told her I had no idea. At first she laughed back and everything felt alright but after a moment our laughter died down and reality seemed to set in. We had nowhere to go and nothing to look forward to. I had run away before but I always ended up at a home. This was the first time that that wasn't going to be an option. The first time that I had nowhere to go. 

We sat there for a while. Two lost girls, both tired, dirty and poor sitting in the middle of an empty train station holding hands and hoping for the best.


End file.
